The Dragon Hunters
by Eogrus
Summary: Starring Karai Umezawa and Sida.
Karai crouched in the undergrowth, observing from the edges of the clearing.

She watched the skies for any trace of her target, still as a gravestone. Though she could feel her heart racing and her stomach curl in anxiety, her patience was remarkeable - one of the very few positive traits people saw in her -, and she didn't allow herself to move one muscle.

Time passed, and she didn't flinch, nor consider leaving. She entertained herself by listening to the sounds of the forest, which in that state of quiet were plenty. A few stood out: a pair of robins fighting to the death, ending with the dominant male fluttering off in a well earned victory; the skittering sounds of a mother squirrel gnawing through her own young; the disgusting "plops" of a noxious fungus unleashing spores.

Karai found beauty in many things. Many people, including supposed nature mages like that plane's elves, often forgot how all life thrived on suffering. Even something as inoccent as a flower required the death of other life to grow from the loam, and she found that inspiring in how harmony with this fact lead to victory and prosperity.

As a cycle of life and death, of balance, it was already inspiring, but what Karai found truly fascinating was how something so utterly meaningless lead to such an universal unity. No living being was above all others in regards to the need to thrive at the expense of other life, no living being could escape from this need to be cruel. All were equal in their dependence for other things to consume.

This made her self-imposed task of killing the haughty, those who flew and breathed fire on other life, all the more satisfying.

She felt a deep satisfaction, a sense of connection and harmony with that cruel, senseless forest, that the roar that shook the trees and moved the air into a powerful gust surprised her. She gasped, and clenched her fist, hoping franticly that she hadn't scared off her target.

Alas, she had not, as a shadow cast over the clearing confirmed, followed by powerful wing beats that almost blew her away.

The dragon hovered for a bit, its wingspan not quite fitting the clearing. Eventually, it closed its membranous wings and fell clumsily, its sprawing limbs absorbing the shock. It growled; it had had deep gashes in its flanks and bite marks on its limbs, largely healed but still bleeding, tainting the grass with a dark red.

The dragon had black scales, glistening lightly under the midday sun, and its head bore a slightly resemblance to that of a snake. Karai was drawn to the creature's fangs, atypically large and thick, bearing serrations that the hunter thought to be quite efficient slicing tools. The creature was overall bulky, and there was a particularly bestial demeanour that Karai quite liked.

Still, she wouldn't spare it.

The reptile strolled a very short way towards the nearby stream. It limped obviously, being badly wounded. It extended a long, forked tongue, lapping from the clear waters with its head only slightly lowered, some blood oozing from the tongue into the waters. Karai figured that it had probably been fighting another dragon, a common event with such territorial creatures. It would make for a disappointingly easy kill, but the creature's appealing appearence more than made up for the fact in Karai's opinion.

The tail flickered in fast but short whip-like motions, as if it was swatting something, though Karai could feel no flies or other insects. She only understood the reason for that display when she looked at the creature's eyes, blue and cold.

It had noticed her presence.

Karai knew she had to act quickly. She took out a tablet, inscribbed with a kanji for "kudzu", and touched it. In the fraction of a second, vines darted from the trees, closing the clearing in a thick canopy and casting it into darkness. The dragon roared, and Karai moved the hand that had touched the kanji forward in a commanding motion, ordering some of the vines to constraint the reptilian beast. They opened some of the wounds, a few with root-like appendages even touching them and lapping some of the blood.

The dragon found its legs, wings and tail wrapped up instantly. It fought back surprisingly calmly, simply biting through and free its limbs - Karai's suspicions about the fangs were rather well confirmed. Still, vines kept incoming, and that allowed Karai enough time to sneak closer. She forced some vines around the neck, the dragon trying to shake them off and even trying to retreat, both met with fulity.

In a few seconds, Karai was next to the dragon's neck, prompting a deep, guttural growl from the creature. She smirked, taking out a curved, black-bladed knife, itself lines with grooves and serrations.

"I must say, you do live up to the rumours" she said mockingly, petting the trapped head softly.

She found a small cut in the forehead, which she dipped her finger in. She brought it to her mouth: it tasted bitter, but she guessed that the flesh would have a rather pleasant deep flavour.

"To see such power, such strength, it almost makes me want to spare you. But, I have so little love for your kind, and to see that strength and power broken, to see the light leave your eyes, that is a fair trade-"

Suddenly, the dragon vanished. In a moment, the powerful bulk was replaced by empty air, and the vine trap collapsed upon itself. Now undone, the green tendrils retreated back into the forest canopy, and in a matter of seconds the darkness was replaced by intense sunlight, so fast that Karai's eyes watered.

After her eyes got used to the light, Karai stood there, trying to process what had just happened. Somehow, her prey just poofed into thin air. A thought occured to her, and she fervently tried to deny it, but as she recollected the sudden pull of the Blind Eternities the evidence all pointed to a single, astonishing direction:

The dragon had planeswalked away.

"And this" Karai said, reaching in her dragon-hide bag to take out a large, bent horn, "once belonged to the bull in the mountains to the south. You can ask the boring old scholar that lives there, he has the other one."

The children around her awed, fondling the long object eagerly. Karai smiled, first a warm manifestation of her appreciation for their amazement, then a smug grin towards a more skeptical, scrawny boy, who stood further back from the others. He gave her a not-particularly-pleasant gaze back, before turning to the side, frustrated.

"And that's all, for now. I need to get going, though I would like a bottle of water if any of you has one."

"Here, have mine" said a girl, among the oldest of the kids, standing just a few feet shorter than Karai.

The dragon hunter took a long sip, leaving a small amount left. She took out her paintbrush and bit her lip, drawing blood. Karai dipped the paintbrush in the small cut, tickling her lips, then inscribed on the bottle the kanji for "prosperity".

"A small gift back. It should bring you wealth, but if you don't want it you can wash it away with saltwater or lime."

The girl bowed in gratitude, grinning in excitement, and the other children began begging for her to give them similar gifts. Karai bothered to sign the next few, before she just walked away, to protests an odd but sweet symphony. As she arrived at the outskirts she considered planeswalking away, her work done in that plane, but then she noticed a familiar shadow, flying in the horizon.

Karai bit her lip once more. It was time for payback.

It took a week, but Karai managed to track the dragon all the way to the Syskala Range, some four miles to the south. For some reason, her target decided to not planeswalk away, and she was immensely thankful for that.

This time, she decided to lay out an actual trap. She chose a rather inconspicuous open slope with only a few scattered pine trees and small, well isolated outcrops, barely capable of hiding anything larger than a cougar. She chose a spot near the edge of a cliff, suggesting an easy take-off for a flying predator, further decreasing suspicion.

Karai took out twelve tablets and laid them around in a circle, burying each other carefully as to leave as little displaced earth as possible. She collected five stones and carved on them with her trusty knife, , forming a small, pentragram-like pattern at the very center of the circle, which she also buried, albeit more hastily.

For most of the following week Karai stalked the slopes, hunting all wildlife she could find. Quail-like birds - which, by asking the locals, she learned were called "tinamous" -, bizarre hare-like rodents - the locals confirmed them to be called "maras" -, strange sprawling, pouched mammals - called "dryolestoids", by that point in which a local hunter had shaken his head in disapproval - and armadillos were the most common quarry.

They were just barely enough to attract a dragon, even in large piles, so Karai sold their corpses in exchange for juicy lambchops, horse quarters and llama meat, supllemented by some wild guanacos and ground sloths she hunted herself. She grabbed these and deposited in her chosen spot, careful as to avoid having any of them fall down the cliff.

The dragon hunter set camp a hundred meters uphill, beneath the shade of a pine tree, far from the trap but with a clear view to it. She didn't light any fire, eating raw meat and roots and sleeping in the cold, covered in pelts she bought from the locals. By the third day, she decided the night air was too frigid for her, so she slept during the day.

The hardest part was keeping the meat fresh. At night this was no problem, but the midday day sun was hot enough to rot the flesh. By the fifth day Karai kicked some of the older corpses down the ciff, replacing them with newly bought ones. The process of hunt-sell-bring-back-uphill was long and tiresome, and she knew she wouldn't be able to keep up for much longer.

Thankfully, at the last sunrise of that week, she heard a roar, echoeing through the valleys. Karai, then shivered bitterly in her pelts, was quick to rise. Her pulse quickened, a sense of victory renewing her as if she had been on the edge of death. She walked behind the pine tree, from where she watched, still covered in her furry cocoon.

In the distance, a large black dragon appeared between the peaks, disappearing again before circumventing the opposing mountain and gliding downwards, descending silently across the massive span between that peak and the trap set up on the slope. As it flew over it the dragon swooped above, soaring in circles as it inspected the meat. Karai gritted her teeth; most of the meat was fine, but if there was one thing she knew is that all it took was one rotten piece to ruin an entire week of waiting.

Thankfully, either the dragon wasn't picky or most of the meat was still fine, as the reptile descended, hovered for a few moments and landed at the very edge of the cliff, the pile laid before it as a large, welcoming plate. It grabbed a horse leg in a particularly bird-like fashion, then threw it in the air and caught it again, gulping down contently. It repeated the process over and over.

Satisfied, Karai took out a newly crafted tablet, on which was inscribbed "antei". She grabbed it with both hands, placed it above her knee, and kicked it, shattering it in two pieces. The broken kanji glowed with a light flickering between vermillion and chartreuse, and so did the kanji in the hidden tablets and stones.

The earth shook, and before the dragon had the chance to take off its limbs were trapped by stone, rising up to engulf them. Further, its strength was sapped into the mountain, leaving it too weak to escape. If it could planeswalk, it had to take some time to do so, and Karai had no intentions of wasting a second more.

She took off her pelts and sprung downhill, almost tripping. As she did she channeled mana into her knife, which became so dark that it seemed eerily unsolid, as if it was a void in the fabric of reality. She covered the distance quickly, her lips twisting into a wicked smile.

The dragon took a deep breath and expelled a torrent of flames, but the experienced hunter rolled out of the way, continuing her maddened pace. The earth began to shake once more: the trap was powerful and leeching, but a beast of that caliber wouldn't be able to be held still for long. Still, she would cover the distance: taking advantage of a small elevation, she jumped into the air, grabbing her knife with both of her hands, preparing for a final strike.

To her surprise, a shadow was cast above Karai, and she was knocked "mid-flight" by a powerful tail. It knocked her breath out, and she fell painfully on the slope, rolling violently until she stopped at the very edge of a cliff. She was just fast enough to hold on with a hand, right above a steep drop. The dragon hunter didn't dare look down, but she knew that she was holding on miles above the lowlands, so much so that clouds extended beneath her feet.

Karai couldn't hold on, and her hand slipped. As she dove into the clouds she heard the rocks breaking and a powerful roar filled the air, followed by another one. Upon retrospection, she realised that the trapped dragon wasn't the one she was looking for: its scales weren't smooth and glistening, but rough and armour like, its bulk was more rect than sprawling, its tail ended on a feathered fan and its wings were those of a bird, not a bat. Worse, the fangs she admired weren't there, instead there was a toothless beak.

Karai couldn't help but laugh. She was going to die, and in the end her fellow planeswalker had won anyways. She closed her eyes, hoping to fall asleep before she hit the bottom.

Instead, she heard wing beats, and she fell brusquely on a scaled, winged back. Though it also knocked her breath, this time she was better prepared and quickly regained it, holding on to a wing. The dragon hunter positioned herself, helped by her saviour's soaring flight. She sat with her legs in front of the wings, a positioned that seemed to cause discomfort to the dragon based on its hissing, but it elicited no further aggression as it rose, flapping its wings gently.

"Why?" asked Karai, as shocked as she was at the clearing.

"For you to see" the dragon responded, an ancient voice as deep as the forests, a slight hissing sound colouring every word.

And unmistakeably female.

"You can talk?"

"Yes. I have discarded my kind's tongue for a more... useful, one."

Karai panted. The fact that she was at such a high altitude brought the possibility that she was hallucinating, but deep down she knew that what was before her eyes was indeed true. The dragon, her prey, had saved her, and now she was talking to her.

"Again, why? You just knocked me out when I was about to go for the kill. If you wanted to save your kind, why bother saving me, when I could so easily be out of your way?"

The dragon produced a gnarling sound, that sounded like a twisted laugh to Karai's ears.

"I have as little love for my kind as you have. In this, I agree with you, and I love nothing more than the kill. So, I've taken upon myself to make you understand, to see why you saw me bleeding and why I came here."

A realisation came to Karai's mind. The wounds, the long stay, it all began weaving a pattern.

"You hunt other dragons, don't you?" Karai asked, though she immediately regreted it as she felt she looked stupid for asking such an obvious question.

"Yes, I do. I hunt others of my own kind, who mistreated me and kept me from reaching enlightenment for two hundred years. Now I am free, now I am strong, now my fangs are blades that cut through dragon flesh and drink dragon blood!"

She roared, loud and clear, and with a powerful stroke she surfaced above the clouds, taking advantage of a thermal to rise even higher in a looping ascent, rising high above the mountains no further movements needed. Karai's heart raced, she had never flown in her life and it was the most amazing sensation she ever had.

They were above everything, and Karai swore she could see the whole plane from that viewpoint. In that moment, she felt a proffound sense of unity, of connection with all living things, so far away but all within the whole. Most of all was the dragon who had saved her, the fellow planeswalker, who was close to her, both in proxmity and in the capacity to be connected with all of the Multiverse.

"This is why I saved you, human. You are a fellow dragon slayer, as deep in the woods as I am, and together we will be strong, if only you accept me as your equal."

A hesitation boiled inside Karai. A beast she had hunted for so long, who she had tracked for so long, wasted an entire week and nearly died because, was asking to be her equal. Worse, a member of the species who killed her family, the very creatures she was hunting in her slow but inevitable campaign of extermination. In any other circumstances, she would have laughed it off, killed the beast and planeswalked away.

Yet, she couldn't help but feel connected to her. She couldn't help but admire her. She couldn't help but spare her, and follow on her proposition.

A roar came from below, and the dragon she had trapped now flew in their direction. It fired another fire column, but the fanged dragon evaded and dropped, closing her wings as she spiralled down like a falcon. The fall was something that Karai dreaded as much as she loved. Her insides felt like dropping, and an urge to vomit began building up. On the other, she couldn't help but give in to the power, to the speed, to the adrenaline rushing through her blood. Her heart beat faster than ever before, and she couldn't help but scream in excitement.

"On the count of three!" she blurted out, and in response the dragon pushed the wings further back.

With a swift move, Karai unseated herself and jumped into the void. It took three seconds for the fellow planeswalker to descend past the feathered dragon, leaving Karai above and the fanged dragon below. The victim in the middle was left in a few moments of confusion, enough for Karai to safely land on its back.

As soon as her feet made contact with the armour-like hide, the beaked jaws snapped upwards, leaving the belly unprotected. The planeswalker dragon then opened her wings and soared upwards. She closed her wings slightly and rotated, latching her powerful claws on the prey's underside.

The feathered dragon bellowed in panic, a sound all too sweet to both planeswalkers' ears. Fangs dig in into the forearm, knife digged in into the nape. Neither Karai nor her dragon companion had any intentions of providing a quick death; both would draw out the kill for as long as gravity allowed.

And it lasted for hours. Defleshed on both ends, the dragon could do nothing but kick in futility and fire aimlessly, leading a slow, agonising death. The dragon planeswalker ate the feathered dragon alive, while Karai simply discarded the flesh, sending it flying. The creature's roars degenerated into pathetic whimpers as its white bone was revealed, before its pathways were choked by its own blood.

Karai and her companion continued the morbid frenzy well after their prey died, stopping only on the threshold of a mile above the lowlands. Karai took a leap of faith into the air, and her fellow planeswalker caught her with her powerful paws. They looked at eah other's eyes without saying a word, and the human climbed her way into the dragon's back, taking her seat between the wings once again.

The dragon calmly soared down, and the two watched the carcasse plummet into the plains below.

Night fell quickly in the Syskala Range, a fact that Karai hated. Thankfully, that night, she was no longer in the top of the mountains, and she could lit a fire at last.

She and her companion settled down in the ravine beneath the cliffs. The dragon had dragged the victim's corpse back there, and Karai was able to earn a fortune by selling the flesh - discarded earlier or still within the corpse -, hide and feathers. The dragon, in turn, had returned to the now broken trap, having eaten through the remaining carcasses. She had even descended down into the ravine to eat the bodies that Karai had thrown down there; a week of rot, as it turned out, was rather fine to her, having seasoned the meat.

They now set beside the fire. Karai had eaten a tinamou, the last and most fresh of the remaining animal bodies. The dragon had eaten through virtually anything, and waited patiently. The human couldn't help but smile at this, and gently placed the still meaty bones besides the fire. The dragon was quick to extend her forked tongue, now fully healed, grabbing the bones.

"I still don't know your name" Karai said, wondering if dragons even had names.

"Sida."

"Sida. I like that. Like a disease, rotting through flesh."

"How lovely" Sida said sarcastically, sarcasm being something that Karai thought suited the dragon rather well, "And you haven't told me yours."

"Karai. Karai Umezawa."

"Illustrious indeed. Like a falling star, burning through the fields."

Karai shrugged playfully. There was a silence, both of them staring into the flames for a while.

"So what now?" Karai started, looking into Sida's eyes.

"Like I said, we are equal. We are dragon hunters. We are kin."

Karai nodded. An idea came to her mind.

"Sida, I know an ancient spell that my family has kept alive for generations. It will bind us in a blood contract, making us blood sisters."

Sida stared back at Karai. The human noticed a deep loneliness within her fellow planeswalker's eyes, a sense of emptiness and need for longing. She thought back at what Sida said about other dragons oppressing her, and something ressonated within her. She thought about the cruel eyes of Nicol Bolas, and how Sida was so unlike him.

Sida nodded, and Karai rose. She took out her knife, and slit her wrist, letting the blood fall into the ground. She spoke ancient words, words she memorised to the letter, weaving the spell with each drop that fell on the ground.

Sida extended her left paw, her palm facing upwards. Her pads were thick, but Karai noticed a small sliver of naked skin between them and the scutes covering most of the upperside of the limb. She kneeled, and the knife fit softly through this sliver, so perfectly that it almost seemed as if it was designed to be cut by it.

Sida winced, and her blood fell into the ground. As it mixed with Karai's, the ritual was complete, and the two dragon hunters felt connected in a way they couldn't explain.

Sida's paw return to the ground, and she rose. So did Karai. They looked into each other's eyes, and the words flowed fourth:

"We are Dragon Hunters. We are Planeswalkers. We are Kin." 


End file.
